"A true friend stabs you in the front." -Oscar Wilde

SM: Family Secrets

"Risha," I managed. I was beyond mad, I was infuriated. I managed to stifle the emotion before I did something stupid, but I'm pretty sure I gave myself away because she backed up a few steps, obviously afraid.

"I'm sorry, Captain, I—"

"Risha," I repeated, cutting her off. "'Sorry' doesn't cut it. That was locked for a reason."

"Well I know that now," she said, still managing to sound pissy despite the fact that she was totally in the wrong. "And I'm sorry if my apology doesn't cut it, but I can't do anything other than apologize. What's done is done."

That was scoff-worthy. I leaned against the wall of my quarters and let out a derisive snort. "You could sincerely apologize, instead of being snippy about it, and admit you were wrong to go through my stuff, and promise to never do it again. Not that I'd believe any sort of promise from you, considering what you just did was a major breach of trust. I'd love to know what you were thinking, but I don't really care."

"Hey, I said I was sorry!" She insisted, and Force help me, she actually did sound sincere. Which was rare, you know, for her. I mean, I liked her, I really did, but she drove me insane, you know? She was fun to banter with, and I valued her wit, and we worked great together… but I never thought she'd go so far as to go through my stuff without my permission.

"This is trespassing," I told her.

"We trespass all the time," she said wryly. "This sort of behavior isn't unusual for people in our line of work." She sat down at the edge of my bed, next to the "Personal Item" she'd found in my locker, and sighed. "I really am sorry. I would never have done something like this ordinarily, but . . ."

"Do go on, I'm interested in hearing your excuses," I deadpanned.

She didn't even glare at me. Not one sign of defiance, not even a bat of an eyelash. Another unusual thing, for her. I normally tried not to read into people's auras, but my intrigue over her uncharacteristic behavior was overriding my anger of her rummage through my things. I looked at her and did a cursory read, allowing me to pick up on the surface of her thoughts and emotions. The prevailing wind was shame, which I admit shocked me. She actually was sorry. 'Risha' and 'apologetic' just didn't go together.

Against all logic, "I'm sorry," she said softly.

Instead of the snarky thing I was going to say, I told her, "I believe that you really are sorry."

She looked up at me and some of the negativity disappeared from her countenance. Risha was one hell of a woman, complicated, temperamental, and sassy. All part of why I liked her. She kept me on my toes, which is something I valued more than my blaster - and that's saying something, because this blaster has been with me through thick and thin. We'd been involved, on-again-off-again (not my blaster, Risha - and at her insistence, because if it were totally up to me, we'd be on all of the time) while she wish-washed between wanting to be the ruler of Dubrillion or sticking to a life of crime and adventure. I thought that she was my friend, and that I could trust her, so this invasion of privacy actually did hurt me quite a bit. I didn't allow that hurt to show, though. I knew better than most the value of protecting your feelings, and there was nothing stopping Risha from one day getting up and abandoning me and fleeing off to Dubrillion to marry some pompous noble kiss-ass. I was prepared for that eventuality, and I thought she understood that . . . But apparently she didn't trust me any more than I trusted her. When the shame and fear disappeared, her aura diminished and some of the hurt she felt shined through.

I hadn't considered that maybe, through my actions, I had somehow inadvertently hurt her feelings. Really, I didn't. I mean, I pissed people off on a daily basis, on account of how great I am and the people around me either love me or hate me for it, but I didn't go out of my way to hurt people's feelings. Pride, yes, but not feelings. Especially not the feelings of the women around me. Being one of my kind, I'm a natural empath, so I'm sensitive to the mental and emotional states of those around me. It's easy for me to form bonds with people . . . And it hurts when people break or betray those bonds. Hence why I don't get 'close' with people. I was hurt by what Risha did, but now I got the sense that I wasn't the only one who was hurt.

I was also getting tired of the not-a-conversation Risha and I had going on. This was going nowhere. "You gonna tell me why?" I asked, making sure I sounded brusque. Again, didn't want to give her the illusion that I cared, especially if it turned out she had gone through my things because of a really stupid, petty reason.

"You know more about me than anyone else," she began slowly. She looked up at me, trying to make eye-contact (which was I guess a habit humans had, until they remembered who they were talking to), and kept her gaze on my face. "Did you know that? I've told you more about my life and upbringing than anyone else. Ever. I've never been close to anyone, never had anyone I could call a good friend until you came along. I was always alone. Even with my father; I never talked to him about issues, or feelings. I think I felt closer to my father when he was in carbonite for ten years than I ever did when he was around, probably because the memories I do have of him were better than the reality. I like to think that I turned out pretty great, all things considered—"

"You did turn out pretty great," I couldn't resist interjecting.

She smirked. "Glad we agree on that."

"Even if you don't understand basic social boundaries," I continued, "or the concepts of privacy and personal space." She glared. My turn to smirk.

"I understand them, I just choose to ignore them when following them isn't in my best interests. Like I said, you know more about me than anyone alive . . . And I know next to nothing about you."

"Nothing? You know I'm in a musical group! That's more than most people know."

Risha rolled her eyes. "Anyone with access to the HoloNet could have told me that, except they wouldn't have needed to, because I have access to the HoloNet. The only people on this ship who didn't know that were Corso and Bowdaar, because Corso's a farmboy who grew up under a rock and Bowdaar is Bowdaar. I'm . . . Not sure what his taste in music is, but it makes sense that, being a slave to Drooga, your name wouldn't have rung a bell."

"Well, fine, then . . . Uh, hey, you know I have a sister!"

"Yes, you have a sister, whom I know nothing about except for what you've said in passing. I know you said that she makes her money as a bounty hunter, and was also in the band, but that's it. I don't even know what she looks like since there aren't any images on the HoloNet of her without wearing a mask or costume, and the one time I caught a glimpse of her was on your holocommunicator and she was wearing a helmet. I don't even know if she's older or younger than you."

"I'm older by a minute," I explained, "making me the older one. A minute isn't a big deal to most people, but it is to twins. It's a huge deal, and it's been the subject of an ongoing argument she and I have had since we were seven."

"That's more than I knew about you a second ago," Risha admitted. "I still don't know anything else. You have a twin sister; that's it. I wanted to know something real about you."

"What?" I guffawed. "You're one of the few people in this galaxy who know Fi-Fi is my twin sister! And even fewer people know she's a bounty hunter . . ."

"Which is great, if I were trying to get to know your sister, but I'm trying to get to know you. I mean, who are you parents? Or are you and your sister orphans? Where did you grow up? How and when did your acquire this ship? You're a musician, a smuggler, a pirate, a gambler . . . How do you do it all?"

I buried my head in my hands and groaned. The Risha I had met before Taris wouldn't have been caught dead admitting something like this, which could only mean . . .

Oh no.

Oh fuck.

This was the worst thing about women, in my opinion. Though to be fair, it wasn't a trait exclusive to women - it wasn't restricted to human women, either. It was just people in general. Even with the people I kept around just as friends, it always came down to this. It was my curse. 'How are you feeling?' 'Where are you from?' 'How come I always do all of the talking?' 'Where's your family?' 'Where'd you learn to fight?' 'Where'd you pick up your skills?' 'How are you so lucky?' 'Why do you never talk about yourself?' Over the years, I'd been forced to come up with several different series of plausible lies that I would cycle through with various people. Occasionally I'd come across someone who didn't give a damn and seemed satisfied when I told them flat out that my past was a closed book. Those people were the ones I treasured the most, because they were so, so, so hard to find. I'd prayed that Risha would never get to this point - actually prayed - but I was always secretly afraid that it'd come down to this one day. I mean, on the one hand, I really liked her - more than I'd liked any other girl I could remember liking. Even when - sometimes, especially when - we annoyed the living piss out of each other. On the other hand, this was a subject that I could never get past with her. It would never go anywhere.

"I don't know what possessed me to go through your locker, I really don't," she went on casually, her tone indicating that she was more or less back to her old self after the shock of me catching her in the act, "and I already said I'm sorry for that. I don't know what I was hoping to find, but I didn't find it. I wanted to know more about you, because I was curious, and I knew you wouldn't tell me if I asked."

"You didn't even try to ask," I pointed out, even though she was right and I knew it.

"I didn't have to try, I knew," she asserted, like it was this absolute fact. In that moment, I couldn't help but love and hate her a little bit each, for that self-assured-ness. It was one of the most attractive things about her. She was far too smart for her own good, and she knew it. "As much as I may want to learn more about you and your mysterious past," she went on, emphasizing 'mysterious' in an overly dramatic way, as if it were some joke, "talking to you about it is like talking to a brick wall. I think I went through your locker because it felt unfair, that you know so much more about me than I did you, and like the no-good dirty cheater that I am at heart, I wanted to even the field. But, it didn't work, and I'm no closer to learning anything about your history than I was before, because now I'm left with more questions than I originally had, so you can rest easy. No real harm done, right?"

I stepped away from the wall and had been pacing while she was speaking. When she was done, I approached her, grabbed the Personal Item she'd stolen from my locker, and held it carefully in my hands. I kept it in the dark, and only ever took it out when I knew for certain I was alone . . . Or I felt nostalgic. Risha's narrowed eyes followed my every movement, like I was a puzzle she had to study to figure out. I stared down at the object, my sight seeing things inside it that Risha could never see. "Did you activate it?" I asked her.

"I tried," she admitted. "It didn't work."

"Why didn't it work for you?" I asked, feigning innocence.

She shrugged, her gaze falling from me to the door, glazing over in thought. "If I had to guess, it's coded to a specific user. It looks newer than the other holocrons I've seen. I've retrieved and sold a few over the years to interested buyers, but never attempted to activate one. I had always heard that only Jedi could activate them."

"Jedi or Sith," I corrected. She perked up at my correction, and I could feel the metaphorical gears turning in her head. I cut off her train of thought before it could get away from her. "Sometimes they're even specific to certain bloodlines, so only those with the correct bio-signature can activate them. You shouldn't have gone through my things. This is private for a reason, Risha."

"I know!" she assured. "I said I was sorry! What more do you want?"

Where she sat on the end of the bed, I plopped down next to her, facing the side. I put the holocron in my lap and examined it carefully. "In order to use a Jedi holocron for its intended purpose," I told her, my voice going into instructor-tone, "you have to be Force-sensitive."

"Oh damn," she said, not missing a beat, "and here I was hoping to renounce my sinful ways and join the Order."

"Nah. Those robes are terribly unflattering. They'd hide your ass too much."

"I think I could pull them off."

"Maybe. You just want a lightsaber, admit it."

"Having one would be kind of nice, but I've heard they take a lot of time and practice to master, and I'm not sure I have the disposition for Jedi training," she snarked. "I think I'm too diabolical."

"You could always defect, join the Sith."

"I've heard the Sith retirement plan is a blaster to the gut, so no, thank you. I'm happy the way I am. Plus, if I really wanted a lightsaber, I could steal Guss'."

I was about to tell her that Guss' lightsaber was broken, but stopped myself because I was pretty sure Guss told me that in confidence. The quick and easy banter but the two of us at ease for a while, but afterward, the silence became stifling.

Finally, she spoke up. "Shlaine, why do you have a Jedi holocron?" She asked. I could tell it was a question that she had been thinking about for some time.

"I'm amazing, I think we can both agree on that," I started off, making sure my voice was full of bravado, "but being amazing - amazingly enough - doesn't come naturally to me. Believe it or not . . . I wasn't always great at everything."

Risha's smile was barbed. "I find that hard to believe. I find it even harder to believe that you're pretending to admit that you aren't completely full of yourself."

"Oh, I am," I disagreed, "totally and utterly full of myself, but the difference between me and the next hack is that I'm not a hack. I am genuinely good at everything I try to do. And, while some of it is natural, like my charm and my incredible good looks, the rest of it took time. I had a lot of time growing up to dream about what I wanted to do with my life. You could say I spent most of my childhood dreaming. What I wanted most, when I grew up, was to be free. All of the people around me were tied down by stupid stuff, like duty, or loyalty, or commitment, or love. My mother, most of all."

"You've never spoken of her," Risha said softly. "In fact, I didn't even know you had a mother. See, this is the sort of thing I was looking to discover when rifling through your stuff. Insider knowledge!"

I stared at her, and though it wasn't visibly clear I was glaring, I think she got the message. "Sorry," she said, utterly insincere.

"No. Don't pretend to be sorry when you're not. It's irritating. Anyway. I love my mother, so does Fia. She could have tossed us aside when we were born. It would have been the prudent thing to do. But she raised us, tried to be a real mother to us. It wasn't easy, and she was busy a lot. The Republic was constantly calling on her to do this and that. She had a duty. They tried to make her into a diplomat, and she refused the position for years until they agreed to pay for all three of to relocate us, her, me, and my sister, to Voss."

"Your mother was a Republic diplomat?" Risha sounded confused, awed, and something else I couldn't name. "I can't imagine she was pleased about her children's choices of professions. No offense intended."

I sighed, and turned the holocron over and over in my hands. The motion soothed my agitated nerves. I hated talking about my family to other people, but Risha deserved to know something. Hacking that lock couldn't have been easy, and a part of me felt like, oddly, that she deserved some information for her effort. Even if telling her something solid would only cause more questions. I knew that if I trusted her with a little bit of information about my past, it would stop her from going through my things in search of answers in the future. That alone made it worth my time. "My mother was never a diplomat, that was just what the Republic wanted her to be. She's never expressed anything but pride in Fia and I, and we know she loves us unconditionally. She's very dear to me. People in my line of work have enemies, and I'm sure you can image a suitably horrible fallout of those enemies found out I had a family. Luckily, my family is pretty kickass and they can all defend themselves, but still, I don't wanna add to that, you know? That's why I don't talk about her."

Risha was silent for a while. When she spoke, she surprised me. "That must be wonderful," she said, a wistful tone in her voice that I had never heard before. "To have a parent like that, who loves and supports you."

I nodded. I was afraid that if I didn't go on, more questions would pour out of Risha, questions I wasn't prepared to answer. "Anyway. She raised my sister and I. I never really knew who our father was, until Mom deemed I was old enough to understand. Our father left when Fia and I were young, and we never knew why. Mother would tell us that he loved us, and that was why he had to leave - to protect us. She would never explain what we needed protecting from, and all Fia and I knew of our father growing up was his shadow. His shadow was everywhere, it followed Fiachna and I throughout our lives. She was always fascinated by him, where I . . . I think I just hated him. I hated the few memories that I had of Dad, and I hated that he left us, but most of all, I hated that he never came back. Mom always insisted that one day, he would come home, but he never did, and I hated him for leaving our mother behind. I don't remember ever seeing her truly happy. Sure, she always looked happy when we playing games and having fun, but I felt that deep down inside, she was miserable. I hated my father irrationally for that. Once I found out the whole truth, and no, not ever getting into that mess with you or anyone - things started making sense, and I didn't know how to feel about anything. I grew up, then left home, left Fia, left everything. I kept in touch. Went to Nar Shaddaa, took up gambling, got lucky and won this ship in a sabacc tournament. I found out I had a knack for piloting. I couldn't, in good conscience, sign up for the Republic war effort, so I took up odd jobs. Skirted the law. Basically, I dicked around. And that's what I've been doing ever since. Fia, she kinda followed after me for a while, but . . . I dunno. Mom always said she had more of our dad in her.

"I've roamed around aimlessly for a while. I don't think I'm aimless anymore, but I'm not ready to stop roaming. This really is the only kind of life there is for me, Risha."

We sat there in silence for a while. Eventually, Risha got up the nerve to point out, "that didn't answer my question, you know."

"Well, maybe this will," I said, and pushed two buttons on the side of the holocron, activating it. It whirred into motion, coming to life, and began to float in my hands. Through my innate Sight, I could see the Force as it flowed through the circuitry, its unique design bringing to life the half-solid hologram it projected into the surrounding air. Blue and white light unfurled out of it, and I heard Risha gasp as the light coalesced into the appearance of a young woman. I knew the woman in the holocron better than I knew myself, though I'd only ever seen her through the physical sight of others, in their minds' eye. Golden skin, and long dark hair. In this image of her, she wore a ceremonial eye-mask that now donned my sister's face, which had been passed down in our family from mother to daughter, per tradition. The woman in the holocron wore the simple pale robes denoting the rank of Jedi Master - the youngest to be given the title in over a thousand years. Nowadays, Jedi Master Vosh tended to prefer a simple veil, and dressed in whatever the weather permitted. The real woman wore a lightsaber, not the same one as the one in the holocron - her first lightsaber - but didn't bother to wear Jedi attire, as a sort of in-your-face protest to those in the Jedi Order who have frowned on her choices over the years.

"Who-?" Risha spat out.

The holocron cut her off. "Risha Drayen, I presume," my mother's image spoke in her languid, soothing voice. "I was watching as you struggled to activate me earlier. It was a little amusing hearing you curse about it, which is why I didn't stop you. You should know, my son was lying when he told you that you have to be Force-sensitive to activate a Jedi holocron."

"Hey," I protested.

She went on, like I hadn't said anything - typical of Mom - "You cannot deny the truth, my son. It does not require a specific talent, or a certain midichlorian count, to activate this device. Merely the correct intent is enough."

"You-what? Intent? What? How did you…?" Risha was totally speechless, and I was loving every second of it.

Mother's holocron patiently continued. "This holocron was created in my youth, after I was given the title Barsen'thor and named Jedi Master, twenty years ago. My name is Mikah Vosh, and I am the mother of this young man. He stole me from the Jedi Temple, where I had previously been living in peace amongst the archives with my fellows. Now I dwell in a damp locker, forgotten." Was it my imagination, or did the holocron seem displeased with me for that?

"Hey! It's a nice locker," I protested, and the fascimile looked up at me with the faintest of smiles.

Risha's speechlessness was not going to last long, much to my chagrin. "Hold it!" She cried out, and angrily put up her hands. "Hold. It. What? Your mother is Jedi?"

"Shout it to the whole world, why don't you," I shot back. "Keep your voice down! This isn't common knowledge, Rish! And you said you wanted to know something about me. Well, here you go."

"Your mother is Jedi Master Mikah Vosh?!"

The holocron seemed to blink, and then asked in a flattered tone, "Have you heard of me? That's nice," she nodded, smiling widely, "I wasn't aware that I was well known."

"I wouldn't say well-known," I was about to go off, but then Risha had to cut me off (again).

"Calling you well known may or may not be correct, but I've heard about you. Then again, I try to be in the know on recent history. Your name has popped up more than a couple of times. I heard about the Rift Alliance, for one. And that whole mess with the droid ship thing, years back, that got hushed up."

"I was created before those events took place," stated the holocron, "but the actual Master Vosh later gave me additional perspective on the events of her life some ten years after the birth of her twins. Would you like to hear about the failed Rift Alliance?"

"Thanks, but no thanks," Risha spat, "I'd like to hear more about the fact that your mom's a Jedi, and how come no one knows about this?"

I shrugged. "It's not really common knowledge, and there's a reason Fia and I keep it a secret. It could mean danger for people if they find out who we are. Could also put mom in danger. That's the last thing either of us want."

The gears in Risha's head started churning once more, and before I could stop her, she turned to the holocron. "If you're his and Fiachna's mother, than who is their father?"

The holocron went silent for a time. "I'm sorry, Risha, but I can't tell you what I don't know," Mikah Vosh' image said. "My creator neglected to program me with that information. All I can say for certain is that this topic evokes deep and conflicting feelings in me - sorrow, hope, and other feelings that I have no names for. There are absences in my memory banks, either removed intentionally or withheld by the original."

The energy in the room kinda drained out after that, so I tried to make light of the situation. "Like I may have mentioned, Dad is a touchy subject," I mock-whispered. Risha didn't say anything.

The holocron of my mother seemed fixated on Risha for a while. "You are an interesting girl," the image of my mother deemed. "You complement my son well."

Risha seemed shocked. "Uh, thank you?"

The holocron nodded her head. "You're welcome. I urge you to understand my intentions when I say this - my family are all that I have. Shlaine has done well, and I know that although the original, organic version of me may not contact him as often as she would like, she is very proud of him, and of Fiachna. The love I have for my family is the most important thing to me. That is why this must be kept a secret. No one can know that he has this holocron. No one can know his heritage. If certain factions found out I was his mother, it would raise inevitable questions that neither I, nor the Order, are prepared to answer. The secrets my family keeps are important, and they are kept for a reason. Risha Drayen, I am choosing to trust you to trust my son's reasons for the secrets he keeps. He has grown from being a rambunctious boy to a good man, and would never hurt you intentionally. The things he does, he does for good reason. Trust in him, if you trust nothing else."

With that, the image of my mother deactivated itself, which was a little unusual. I knew that holocrons were a little self-aware, but it was always disconcerting when they displayed signs of that awareness. When the light faded and the holocron floated back into my hand, now silent, I put it back into my locker and locked it. I felt briefly sad at the quiet that came when my mother's voice faded . . . After all, I did miss her, and all the holocron amounted to was a painful reminder of the currently estranged relationship my mother and I had. I resolved that I would probably have to visit soon. Or just call. Or at the least, just send a message. Didn't want to be overwhelming, you know. Bah. I'd think about it later.

Risha stood up when I did, and followed me out of the door out my quarters in silence. The ship was quiet, most of everyone being asleep. She kept following me all the way to the mess, which is when she finally spoke, her voice subdued. "That was . . . something."

I smirked. "Bet you didn't see that one coming, eh?"

"No, no I did not. I'll keep your secret, but you have to answer one more question for me."

"I might answer."

"Good enough. Question: that lightsaber that was at the bottom of your locker, do you know how to use it? And if you do, why don't you use it?" She leaned forward across the counter of the mess as I ransacked one of the bottom compartments for the alcohol. I knew there was some Corellian whiskey down there, if Corso hadn't drank it all without me. I did find the bottle after a few seconds of searching, though it was half empty, which meant I was going to have a talk with that boy in the morning about drinking my booze. If he was going to drink my booze, he was going to have to drink it with me.

"That was two questions," I said as I took a deep swig from the bottle, because I couldn't be bothered to look for a cup.

"Oh, come on, quit playing coy."

"That lightsaber is missing its primary crystal," I lied to her in lieu of an answer, and drank some more, loving the feeling of the warmth from the alcohol. In all honesty, I hadn't known that she had also seen the lightsaber. That thing had been in a separate compartment in my locker, with its own lock. I should've checked it first, but I was too distracted by my anger at her for invading my privacy. Women! Ugh. This is why I had been known to occasionally take a break from women to date men. Hell, I didn't have a real preference - man, woman, alien, whatever (though I drew the line at droids, simply because it isn't fun flirting with something that's programmed to like you). At least you could trust that a man, no matter his sexual proclivities, to not go rifling through your things because they 'wanted to get to know you.' Maybe it was the whiskey I was daintily sipping (read: chugging), but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like the biggest bunch of bantha shit I'd ever heard. Why had I shown her my holocron again?

Risha rolled her eyes for what was what, the eighth time in the last two hours? I wondered if she had a quota on daily eye-rolls, and if I could ever reach it. I was on a roll. I'd have to really try for it one of these days, see what happened. "That didn't answer my question and you know it. I'm going to assume 'yes,' because that would be more entertaining if it were true, and I doubt you'll ever tell me the truth anyway."

I took another drink. "Assume away. All truth is subjective."

"Is that some Jedi wisdom?"

"No, it's Shlaine wisdom."

"I wasn't aware you had any wisdom."

"Contrary to popular belief, I'm incredibly wise."

"I find that hard to believe."

"No, really. I'm going to write a book full of Shlaine wisdom. I'm thinking of calling it, 'Shlaine's Bag of Tricks.' What do you think?"

"That a terrible title. How about, 'Shlaine's Guide to Drinking, Thieving, and General Skullduggery?'"

"See, that's an even worse title. I like the word 'skullduggery,' though. Let's do something with that . . ."